Ratchet and Clank: Thirteen years together
by Jak Cooper the Lombax
Summary: Ratchet and Clank are looking back on some old memories and even a bit of Ratchet's childhood. If I happened to have had a similar plot to anything, that's purely coincidental. Disclaimer: Don't own Ratchet and Clank and I don't see myself getting them anytime soon. Flamers will be thrown into a swimming pool full of ice. Decided to make a One Shot.


Okay, I fixed all the sleeping errors that I could see and some that Bebuzzu pointed out, and I'm actually thinking about rewriting this in 1st person vewi since the stories I write in 1st person get more views and reviews. Please let me know if you guys want this in Clank's 1st person POV!

**Disclaimer: Don't own Ratchet and Clank so I don't see a reason why Insomniac would want to sue. Besides, my pen name could never be my real name. I wish it was though 'cause then I could be a Lombax!  
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1:30 a.m. Standard Galactic Time (S.G.T)

Kyzil Plateau, Ratchet's bedroom

It was dark in Ratchet's bedroom,and the Lombax was in a deep sleep. Clank was watching him sleep as he was compressed up in his backpack form. His optics could only pick up the movements of Ratchet's body with every inhale and exhale the feline alien preformed. There were nights very similar to this for the robot. Ratchet deep in a calm dream, despite the Lombax had extreme insomnia and would work on projects of his own mind for days on end.

Even once the big eared mechanic started creating a water proof cell phone with sixty four gigabytes of apps and music with a unlimited cloud storage, perfect connection to WiFi networks with no extra fees, caller identity, and even a cup holder for his coffee which he used often when working on the crazy phone upgrade,but whenever the Lombax would reach for the circuit splicer for the gigabyte chip, he'd knock over his coffee and spill it on the phone's un-waterproofed circuits. Which would set the mechanic back about a week to wait for a re-order for another sixty four gigabyte chip. The small robot quietly chuckled to himself as he put himself in recharge mode until his tinkering friend wakes up in the mourning.

7:30 a.m. S.G.T.  
Kyzil Plateau, Ratchet(and Clank)'s bedroom

Sprawled out on his bed, Ratchet snored and drooled onto his pillow as he was in a heavy sleep. Clank, however, was down in the kitchen fixing a bowl of dry Lombax food completely soaked in space cow milk. Right when the first drops of milk hit the dry food, a odor kicked up and Clank's scent detector snatched what it could do to Ratchet, and he found that it caused nothing harmful to him since this was the first time Clank was going to feed Ratchet this. Right when the scent hit Ratchet's nose, his stomach gave a loud growl in hunger. The mechanic's eyes cracked open with drowsiness and he mumbled, "Cut that out, Clank! I'm not done sleeping just yet. Lemme just catch one more bird from that Viridian sector!"

The robot on top of the table, gave out his signature laugh as Ratchet continued to fight against his Lombaxian instincts and his lazy side. "I wanna eat, but I want to keep sleeping." This continued to yowl in Ratchet's head for about ten minutes until Ratchet found himself wide awake and licking his lips at the thought of getting to drink milk and eat meaty tasting pencil shavings. "FINE!" Ratchet yelled out loud over his thoughts. Jumping up onto all fours, Ratchet arched his back just like the way a domestic cat would and sheathed and unsheathed his claws on the scratch post he put on the head of his bed after shredding up seven pillows in just a week. Clank saw the whole Lombax wake up routine every mourning that Ratchet and been sleeping the previous night for the past thirteen years ever since the morning after he and Ratchet defeated Chairman Drek.

Thirteen years ago, this very morning was the mourning that changed the entire universe. The morning that Ratchet meet Clank after Clank had been spat out by Chairman Drek's robot factory and flew from the factory straight to the plateau by strange coincidence that was the very plateau that Ratchet lived on. Clank had a very happy fealing inside of him that made him start to wonder something. What if Ratchet didn't find him? What if Ratchet didn't even exist at all then?

"What are you thinking about, buddy?" Ratchet asked as he sat down in the chair in front of Clank. Pulling the bowl of Lombax cereal soaked in milk close, Ratchet then saw Clank's expression change from deep thought to sadness. "Clank. Pal. Hey!" the mechanic said as he snapped his fingers in front of Clank's optics. Clank blinked as he came back to reality after a depressing thought, "I am sorry about that Ratchet." the small robot apologized.

The mechanic then got a large spoonful of the cereal in his mouth and started chewing the hard but tasty food. "Just don't scare me like that,buddy." He said after swallowing the cardboard textured food down. Then Clank mumbled,"X-J 0461." Ratchet then stopped mid chew and stared at Clank. There was silence between the two for what felt like Ratchet was almost like the two years he didn't have Clank there on his back,but longer than two years.

"Clank?" Ratchet finally broke the silence after he swallowed his food, "Are you feeling okay?" Clank broke out of his daze with a slightly confused look in his eyes. "I am fine. I just had some thoughts about what could have been a different outcome of our past." The robot said as he climbed down onto the floor and got a small pint of oil out of Ratchet's rummage box and got back up in the chair on the other side of the table.

"Like what?" Clank heard Ratchet ask as he then lowered his head and saw his optics scan a odd stain that has been on the table for years that his scanners just then identified it as Ratchet's blood from when he was about ten. Five years before they met. Clank fell into another thought this time, he wondered what was Ratchet's life like before he became a galactic hero? "What was it like?" Clank asked," What was it like before I came into your life?"

Ratchet had a slightly taken back look on his face and he shifted uncomfortably in his chair for a minute and he said," I listened to Ace Hardlight and Captain Qwark while I was putting together a spaceship."  
"I meant more like before you knew you were going to get off this planet." Clank strengthened his question.  
Ratchet gave a deep sigh as he remembered his childhood. "My life sucked space rocks for breakfast. I guess I was gonna tell you this one day or another."

Eighteen years ago

Ratchet was scrounging around a scrap pile and as he was digging through some scrap, he felt a tubular object and grabbed it and tugged on the object until it came out, but he lost his footing and tumbled down the scrap pile until he hit the sandy ground just at the foot of the pile. After his head stopped spinning, he looked at the strange wrench in his hand. "Omni-Wrench 8000?" He thought just before he heard a child say, "Mommy, what's that?" The child asked it's mother as he pointed at a oil and dirt covered ten year old Ratchet. The mother took one glance at Ratchet and said,"I don't know,but don't stare at it," and she dragged her son away by the wrist.

Ratchet then looked over at his shadow, it was still morning and he said to his shadow,"What are you? You don't even know what you are." After five minutes of sitting on the dirt, Ratchet got up on his feet and felt the Omni-Wrench's weight for the first time and started dragging it to his home which was about a half a mile away.  
Half way to his home, a group of kids saw Ratchet and started making fun of his tail and ears by putting a stick at their rear ends and using their hands for the ear mocking. There were four of them which three were boys and one was a girl and they were reptilian native to the planet Veldin.(AN: I thought that since Veldin is mostly plateaus and deserts, reptilian would most likely fit the planet for natives and Ratchet was originally going to be a reptilian so, I thought that that's what the native life form of Veldin would be.)

Ratchet ignored their insults and shuffled his feet as he kept going home dragging the wrench behind him. That's when he felt a sharp pain hit his left ear and saw a small pointed rock bite the left ear of his shadow in the dust.  
"Nailed him right in the ear!" The girl shouted out over the guys' laughter while they were on their backs holding their stomachs from laughing so hard.

Ratchet could feel the cut from the rock start to sting from dirt grains getting into the cut. He felt tears starting to well up in his eyes and his vision stared getting blurry as he started running home and he felt his tears sneak out of his eyes and start to dampen the fur on his cheeks. When he got home, he dumped his wrench in a box that had mostly smaller wrenches and screwdrivers and a large bag of bolts in it. Ratchet then lied down on his old bed that had springs poking out on the sides and a clawed up bed post.

As he felt like he couldn't have a much worse day, he saw his beat up fridge start spewing smoke out the back when the freezer blew out. After about a hour of working on the fridge, he got the freezer fixed enough to let the frozen food last a week longer. Just before he went back to his bed, he looked over at his shadow and said to it, "You don't belong here. You look nothing like them. You don't even know who or where your parents are." When he lied back down on his beat up bed, he cried himself to sleep.(AN: Aww...Don't you wish you could just hug Ratchet?)

Present Day

"And that was what my life was like before we met. I was scavenging a scrap heap and crying myself to sleep." Ratchet ended his story which left Clank a sympathetic look on his face. "So that is why you have a strong case of insomnia. I never knew that the cause of it was that you cried yourself to sleep every night." The robot stated as his Lombaxian friend lifted the bowl up to his mouth to drink the last of the milk. After drinking the last of the milk in the bowl, Ratchet put the bowl down and licked the last drops of milk off his lips and picked up the glass of orange juice and start drinking the liquid down. "What was your first love interest?" Clank asked the Lombax while he had a good amount of juice in his mouth which Ratchet reacted to Clank's question by immediately swallowing all the juice causing him to choke slightly.

"What?" The mechanic asked with a slightly hoarse voice to his robotic friend. Clank gave him a stare that simply read, "_you__ know exactly what"_. Ratchet took a gulp as he realized that he wasn't going to get out of this question. "Okay, okay. My first love was Sasha. There. There's your answer." Clank slightly laughed and said "Are you sure she was your very first? Because I remember you seemed to have a thing for Angela Cross when we were in Bogon."

Ratchet blushed after Clank said that _thank the Zoni he can't see me blush under my fur, he thought as_ he hung his head in defeat and said, "Okay, Angela was my second. There was a girl when I was twelve. She didn't mind what I looked like. I happened to have liked her because all the other girls called me stupid cat names."

"She simply called me by name, but the day I got the guts to ask her out, she went away, and I just gave up on the love thing until I saw Angela and I thought maybe I'd see another female Lombax, but I think my time with Azimuth cleared my question." Ratchet finished as Clank had another question come up, "What was high school like?" Ratchet simply gave Clank a look that stated that he didn't want to talk about that subject ever again. "Well, what was the two years I was gone by the Zoni?" The robot asked and Ratchet had a slightly different look on his face that was a mix of sadness and depression, and the mechanic said, "I slept with a stuffed Secret Agent Clank after I cried my eyes out holding it close for weeks until I got off my butt and went looking for you."

Clank couldn't help but smile as he thought what it would look like with Ratchet asleep with the stuffed agent held close. "What are you smiling' about,pal?" Ratchet asked when he saw the smug look on Clank's face. Clank simply gave out his signature laugh and stayed quiet while Ratchet started washing his cereal bowl in the sink.

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So, Good? Bad? Reviews please and maybe another chapter

**_Jak Cooper the Lombax_**


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